Passover

8a.m.Good Friday.

They were out of school because it is Good Friday.  Man-Cub would say “It’s Good Friday because we are outta school”.  So they played to their hearts content in the glorious freedom of MK’s in Africa. 

5p.m.Passover. 

Tonight we got to participate in our first Passover dinner.  The kids watched Prince of Egypt and we are reading in a story bible about the Exodus.  It’s a different emphasis on the meaning of this day, but one I am glad to be connecting in the synapses of their heart and heads.  Freedom.  Deliverance.

7:30p.m.Two little kids falling asleep all over me at the church service tonight.  How am I going to get them home? Daktari was here with us a minute ago, but he was paged up to help a lady with pulmonary embolism who isn’t going to make it through the night.  Now the lights of the meeting room are dimming and the candles being extinguished and it’s raining- the blessed rain that makes such sweet melodies on these tin roofs.  How am I going to get these children home?

“I’m carrying you home baby”, I say as she feels the cold water from the sky hit her sweet little legs.  Two Kenyan defense forces security guards are patrolling the night with great big guns hanging around their necks.  They ask me “habari mtoto?”- How’s the child?  I tell them she’s just sleeping and thank them for their work here.  We appreciate them. 

I think about the Roman soldiers patrolling the night in Jerusalem, Mary and Jesus, the Pieta. We sang O Sacred Head Now Wounded up there in the meeting room on the hill, just inside the staff gate of the hospital. 

I think about Garissa, Kenya.  147 mothers wanting more than anything to carry their sons or daughters home from there. 147 fathers waiting more than watchmen wait for the morning to hear from a son or daughter that they will still be coming home.  These were the valedictorians, the top students in high school.  They have to work so, so hard to get to a university in Kenya.  Their families have worked unbelievably hard at raising funds to get a student through university in Kenya.  Now the families will be carrying them home for burial.

I cannot process this event.  I cannot fathom the shock and grief and outrage.  Writing helps.  But really I can only carry my babies home and be so thankful for their sleepies that keep them needing me.  Their little requests for water at night, for one more story and the contented sigh of well-entered rest inside the mosquito net keep my heart so thankful for them.  They have no idea.

10a.m.Tomorrow- we will get up and scramble around like crazy candy addicts searching for bright plastic eggs and try to connect it all somehow to Jesus. 

6a.m. Sunday- We will watch the sunrise over a big wooden cross and stand in its shadow to decorate it with flowers.  147 mothers and 147 fathers will stand in the shadow of the cross somewhere all over Kenya with their shock and grief and outrage, and they will be able to look up at the Father who saw His Son die for them.  And He will say “I’m carrying your baby home too”.  Lord, please.  Let them see that you are there.